Q&A Blog Posts

As we move into the final work of the semester, you are now coming to an exciting point: asking and answering your own questions. Read back through your blog: do you see questions? Consider what you might like to do for your final project. Can you frame a question about the topic?

Use your blog space to facilitate asking and answering your questions. Write out your question. Write out some reflections about why you want to ask this question. Go and search either in Google scholar or in the databases at our library site that contain journals for Composition and Rhetoric Journals, or English journals, or Education journals, using keywords relating to your question, and see what you find. OR--look back at some of the articles we read that are related to your topic and scan their bibliographies. See any interesting articles listed there?

The idea is to go swim around for a awhile and sample what other writing center people are saying about the things you are interested in. When you find an article you really like, post it in your blog, along with the question--either as a link to the article or maybe with a link to the pdf, or even just as an old fashioned citation. Then tell what question you feel this article may have answered for you AND what new question you now have!

This kind of entry is like an entry in a "research log." Maybe you have done something like that before? It is a great strategy for working on a research project.

You should do 3 of these posts as you are working on your final project. More details on the final projects will appear in a folder in the Projects folder on Blackboard.

Where ESL and LIteracy Meet...

It seems from you blog posts that you go a lot out of Dr. Grove's visit. I am really glad. I also think it is interesting to think about the connections between the ways ESL students are struggling with literacy in a second language, and the issues that face people struggling with literacy in their native language. Some of you may know Professor Hoyle in the Business School. He has an interesting post this week about the struggles in Afghanistan, and the long term cost of leaving a generation of people without education.

Instead of producing doctors, engineers, accountants, and the like who could serve as the leaders to help pull the country out of poverty, an entire generation basically went without education.

And then he goes on to say:

There is a lot of criticism of the educational system in the US and, most certainly, improvements can be made. However, regardless of what you think of US education, no one can deny how important it is to the growth and prosperity of our country. Sometimes it is easy to say “oh, I’m just a teacher” and view the job as unimportant but those of us in education need to constantly remind ourselves of how essential our job is.

And this made me think of Meghan's post about her third grade teacher and also about many of your posts this week (Kaitlin, Gyra, and others)about how overwhelming it can feel to work with an ESL student who has so much to learn! You may end up feeling the same way about the kids you are helping at the Boys and Girls Club--some of them may not be able to do the kind of work you hope they will do, and you might wonder if you have been any help at all.

Teaching can be hard because, as many of you have noticed, you rarely get to see the "final" result. (Is there a "final" result?) It is slow, one step at a time business. As consultants, it can be frustrating to not get to fix all of the things that you would want to fix in a paper that you see. But never forget how important your real work is: spending time with the writer, paying attention to details, asking and answering questions. That is where learning happens. It builds up slowly, day after day. And on our campus, a writing consultant may be the only person who ever does this for a student writer! Your work is VERY important.

Now's a Good Time for Asking Questions, Making mistakes, Etc.

I have been doing a lot of reflecting and also some follow up work after our visit to the BGC on Monday. First, I have to laugh at a mistake I made:

I was worried, really worried, about how to give all the drivers directions to and from the Club. I spent more than an hour on Sunday, and then several more hours on Monday, looking at Google maps, asking people about the roads at that hour of day, if and when one could turn left off of Belvidere, etc. I couldn't decide if we should go roads or highways, stay south of the river or go north, go the same way down and back or go the easiest way each time. I printed maps and highlighted stuff.
And then I discovered on Monday that I somehow messed up an email I thought I had sent telling everyone where and when to meet (maybe I didn't hit the final "send"? I prefer to just blame Blackboard). So now I had left everyone without the most basic piece of information: where to start from!
Then, when we finally met up in the parking lot and I awkwardly start trying to find out how much the drivers know about the City map, I got quizzical stares: "Why don't you just give me the address. I have GPS ..."
Oh. Right. I just didn't think of that!

I was stressing about the wrong thing. I do that fairly often. Was this a generational thing? I have a GPS, but I only use it on long trips. So I did not ask-- I assumed. It is hard, though, to know what questions to ask.

I also observed one thing I wanted to note at the Club: the kids seemed so quiet in the room. I was nervous and talking too loud because I was worried people would have trouble hearing me and each other over all the noise in the hall. Awkward. I wondered why all the shy kids had signed up to work on this project. But as we were leaving, I was nearly knocked down by those same kids, running, laughing and being really LOUD. I realized that my observations of them in the teen room, talking to you guys, only revealed a tiny little bit of who they are, and it was probably not an accurate reflection of how they seem most of the time. That seems important to remember.

And, since I am asking you now to step up your questioning, here is one that I am pondering:what would be the best thing that one of our Club students could get out of working with us? What are we hoping for?

I will talk to you all in class tomorrow about follow up conversations I have had with key players on this project, and where we think we are going.